🇨🇦 Underwater Sports in Canada

April 29, 2019 Canada, Featured, Freediving, Underwater Hockey, Underwater Rugby - 5,291 views

Ice Hockey is one of National Sports in Canada – photo: pixabay

(Special Sportalsub.net)

We could say that ice hockey is the national sport of Canada, being its professional league the NHL, which includes teams from the USA and Canada, which generates more fans in this great country of North America, generating income not only for tickets, advertisers and marketing, but also in important movement of money through online sports betting.

Underwater Hockey

However, one of the sports that has most growth in recent decades has been underwater hockey, in which Canada has had an important international participation since 1980, the year in which it hosted the 1st World Underwater Federation (CMAS) Championship in the city of Vancouver. Since then Canada has hosted the World Championship three times more, Montreal (1990), Calgary (2002) and Quebec (2018).

Canada will again participate with their national teams in the 5th CMAS Underwater Hockey World Championships by Age Groups (U23 and U19) that will be held in Sheffield, England from August 14 to 24, 2019.

Underwater Hockey is very popular in Canada / photo by Ronald Laurens @ Sportalsub.net

Underwater Rugby

Another sport that has had a breakthrough in recent years has been underwater rugby, in which Canada participated for the first time in the X World Championship Cali 2015 in Colombia occupying the 8th place with the men’s team and this year 2019 will again have presence in the 11th edition of the Championship in Graz, Austria from July 27 to August 3, this time with the participation of a female national team for the first time, which will be directed by Camilo Contreras, a Colombian player and coach who was part of the team Castores from Bogotá and who has been a member of the Men’s Underwater Rugby Team of Canada since 2015.

Camilo has been developing underwater rugby in that country for several years and currently lives in the city of Toronto, is also Director of the Underwater Rugby Commission of the Canadian Underwater Games Association (CUGA), which is the one that represents these sports before the CMAS.

Underwater Rugby Team in Canada / Photo by: Camilo Contreras

Although the CUGA also has among its mission and objectives include and develop the other underwater sports such as finswimming, underwater target shooting and underwater orientation, currently only actively develops mainly rugby and hockey (underwater), with teams in different regions of Canada, such as British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Yukon.

Freediving

Freediving, other of the underwater disciplines, has been developed historically by AIDA Canada, an organization that represents the International Association for the Development of Apnea (AIDA) in this country. Canada has had important freedivers such as Mandy-Rae Cruickshank, Jana Strain, Eric Fattah and William Winram, among others, who have had important results, records and popularity in international competitions.

Also in recent years, freediving has become very important in the region of Quebec, where the Association of Monitors of CMAS of Quebec, which has recognition of the CMAS at the level of scientific and technical committee in the area of diving responsible also for development of this underwater sport, with the organization of courses for judges and competitions in recent years.

Freediver William Wimran – photo: AIDA Canada website

Canada is not only winter sports such as ice hockey, mass sports such as baseball, basketball or Olympic sports such as athletics or swimming, Canada is also another country where the Underwater Sports lives with great intensity.

Links:
CUGA: http://cuga.org/en
AIDA Canada: http://aidacanada.org/english/
CMAS Quebec: http://www.cmasquebec.org/

Author: Miguel Cedeño
Director of Sportsub.org & Sportalsub.net
miguelsportsub@gmail.com / miguel@sportalsub.net
Twitter: @miguelsportsub